SCSI Guru's, plz help me...

[Grail]

I received some money for Xmas this year and I would like to get a UW SCSI HD for my computer. My motherboard is the Tyan Thunder 100 BX motherboard and has a Dual Channel Ultra Wide SCSI adapter onboard. My question is that if I went out and bought a Ultra2 Wide SCSI HD, would it default to a Ultra Wide or Wide SCSI speed? I know the difference between the two is 20 megs of bandwidth. I don't wanna buy a HD that won't give me 40 megs of bandwidth/speed.
I was told that I should get a 10k rpm SCSI HD(Most of the ones I have seen are U2W SCSI). Could you give me your opinions on which HD's are recommended and also answer my question above? Thanks in advance.

[Aurel]

Quantum Atlas 10K. At least I want one of those.(I'm not a SCSI guru, sorry)

[KvHagedorn]

Grail,

Nice board. I have a Tyan Thunderbolt with the Adaptec 7896 adapter built in and am running a 18GB Seagate Cheetah in LVD mode on channel A. It screams. With the 7895 on your board, you can get your maximum bandwidth if you will only isolate the Ultra/Wide devices on one channel. Put your CDROM and any other legacy devices on channel B.

Get the Cheetah. I've had great luck with it. Seagate has the most experience with the 10k rpm drives and the LP drives run relatively cool. The U2W LVD models work fine in single-ended mode, and if you should decide to upgrade your adapter, you could double your current maximum bandwidth.

By the way, even 40MB is unlikely to be necessary on a single-drive system, but if you want to mess with RAID or use multiple drives doing multiple things, I would recommend the U2W LVD adapter.

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Kind Regards,

KvH

[superfly]

you'll have to set up the sistem in the bios to boot from the scsi drive instead of IDE...after getting the drive partitioned and formatted of course,then comes the task of installing the operating sistem from the other drive,(using norton ghost)or reinstalling everything new,windows allredy has drivers for the built in scsi controller on the motherboard so that won't be a problem,but feel free to update them(they're not the most recent)there's also some guidelines to follow when you're connecting the drive to the controller,one is scsi ID the other is termination(either are set by jumpers on the drive)you have to set the scsi ID to 0 if you want the drive to be the one that windows starts from. the other guideline is termination,all scsi components can be terminated with jumpers or a self terminating ribbon cable,now since you're using only one device(you can connect up to 14 devices by the way) you'll have to enable it and only use the connectors on either end of the cable(don't use the ones in between)now as for performance all scsi drives are faster than IDE drives but it's not only for speed that they're built it's also for multitasking operating sistems(not win98)like windows N.T,linux,solaris,unix etc...you'll really find a benefit when you are doing several things at the same time and have half a dozen devices connected to the controller(like i do)i'll give you an example... i have a dual processor sistem(two p3600's)and a scsi dvd-rom,two hard drives and two scsi cd-rom's(one cd-r) i can be burning a cd while defraging another drive(not my main drive C and playing quake 3 at the same time with no slowdowns at all... so if you're using it with win98 you're only scratching the surface of what the scsi protocol is all about and bang for the buck you're better off with IDE,hope that helps.

[Grail]

Thanks for the replies. My current setup for SCSI components are as follows: On Channel B(SCSI-2): Pioneer 6x SCSI DVD ROM and on Channel A(UW SCSI): None.

I hope to get a few more SCSI periphials in the future. As superfly stated, you can do a lot with SCSI parts. I find myself ripping music off my ever expanding CD collection and encoding them at the same time, as well as participating in IRC chats, ICQ, file sharing with friends over ICQ, etc, etc...
My system slows down to a crawl when I have 2 IRC programs open, 3 Cute FTP programs active(either downloading or trying to log on to various FTP servers), as well as ICQ, Office 2k start bar, SB Live crap loading my system tray, and a few other programs I have forgotten that I run.
Currently, I do all of this on a Tyan Thunder 100 BX, 128 megs PC100 ram, 3C905B-TX ethernet card, SB Live! Value, Matrox G400 MAX, WD 6.4 gig 5400 rpm Caviar hard drive(only HD and came from my first system), internal Zip(IDE) and a cable modem.
I want a performance increase as well as use the onboard SCSI. I do hope to get another SCSI HD in the future.
I am becoming a power user and am looking forward to Win2K(not consumer verion). Maybe even get into Linux one day. I also hope to get a dual proc setup going sometime. I hope this helps you guys/gals in telling me what I should get.

Finally, would one of you be able to answer my question? Thanks.

[KvHagedorn]

Hi Grail..

Thought I answered it for you.. Yes, most U2W LVD drives will default to single-ended Ultra Wide mode and give you all the performance a normal, single-ended 40MB/s Ultra Wide drive would on your system. (check the manufacturer's website for specifics. I know the Seagate drives do this without problems.)

BUT, you must keep the channel you are using for this drive free of 50pin legacy devices or normal wide (20MB/s) devices to retain the 40MB/s bandwidth. Each channel reverts to its lowest common denominator as far as speed is concerned. Just put your new hard drive on channel A and the rest of your scsi stuff on channel B and all will be well.

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Kind Regards,

KvH

[kelin]

I would CERTAINLY advise the Quantum Atlas 10K...still rated at the FASTEST HD out there...
Anyway, I have it on my U2W bus on the Adaptec 2940U2W card...my IBM UW Ultrastar on the UW bus and my Yamaha 6416 SCSI-2 CD-RW on the 50pin....
As far as bandwidth....I get 26 megs average throughtput with the Atlas 10K...the IBM gets 13 or so...and with all three running at the same time, I get in the 43 meg/s neighborhood...
The 40 meg barrier is only a problem if you have 2 devices or more that will approach the 40 meg limit...
Tried running the Atlas 10K on the UW bus with the UW drive (In fact, before getting the 2940U2W card, I had, actually still have, an Iwill 2935 Uw which is really an Initio 9100UW...and ran both the IBM and Atlas 10K on it together)...
Anyway, with the Atlas 10K on the UW bus with and without the IBM and with and without the Yamaha CD-RW....I didn't see that much loss....think my average throughput went down to 21 megs/sec or so...and or course, I wouldn't be able to achieve my 43 megs average with all three devices running at the same time....BUT HOW OFTEN DO I RUN ALL THREE TOGETHER???
What I am trying to say, is, it shouldn't be too much of a perf loss for ya running a U2W LVD on the UW bus for now...
Good Luck
Kelin

[Grail]

Sorry for being dense guys. I blame eggnog on this one. Seriously tho, I am relatively new to SCSI(blatantly obvious) and missed that Hagedorn. Kelin, thanks for further clarifying. Thanks to the rest of you for your contributions.
I will check out the Quantum Atlas 10k as well as some Western Digital/Seagate. Hopefully, one of the 10k drives will be in my price range. BTW, the next SCSI adapter I would most likely get would be a SCSI 160 adapter.

[Johnny Ray]

I've been very happy with my Quantum Atlas 10K. Surprisingly quiet and runs pretty cool. Reasonably priced (for SCSI!) too.

John

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PIII450 => 504 MHz, Asus P2B, G400MAX, PowerDesk 5.30, Aureal SQ 2500 (Vortex2), Klipsch Promedia V2.400 speakers, DirectX 7.0, Adaptec AHA-2940U2W and Fireport40 Dual UW SCSI controllers, Quantum Atlas 10K and WD Enterprise HDs, Plextor UtraPlex Wide, S&F 4012 CDR, the last ISA modem, etc.

[ObiBen]

Hey Grail,

Go for Seagate if you can afford it. Friend of mine has the Cheetah 10K...loves it. I, on the other hand, have an older Seagate Barracuda and Quantum Atlas III (7200 rpm), but I love both drives.

You have SCSI...make good use of it. I know people who have spent the extra money to have those built in adapters, but only use CD-Recorders on them. From my experience with SCSI drives, Quantum and Seagate are the ones to look at. Happy Holidays!

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Regards,

Ben

Config: AOPen AX6BC, P2 400@450, 128MB RAM, SB Live!, Netgear 10/100, Adapted 2940U2W SCSI adapter, Seagate Barracuda 4.3GB UW, Quantum Atlas III 9.1GB U2W, Yamaha 4416S writer, Pioneer 36X SCSI CD reader, STB Blackmagic V2 (SLI) - removed after new TurboGL, Matrox G400MAX,
Viewsonic PS790 and G773, Win98SE

[Jimmy]

Greetz Grail,
I've recently upgraded my 1.2Gig Quantum FB to an Atlas IV 9.1GB.The performance difference is pretty good.Not (only) because of the greater speed of the HDD but mostly because the SCSI controller doesn't use the CPU(5%usage top whereas the IDE contr. can get as high as 95%).Windows boots up a LOT faster now and runs much smoother.On any(I think) U2W device there is a jumper named FORCE SE.U can force the drive to default to UW operation by setting this jumper.As for the performance loss I don't think it's great assuming that the 40MB/s barrier of the UW bus isn't breached(which is kinda difficult with only one HDD).The only performance loss will derive from the burst speed which will be reduced to a max of 40MB/s.But that isn't very important.I currently use my HDD with a DAWI DC-2976 UW controller which is far worse than the Adaptec contr. built in your MB.Believe me it is a shame to waste it on a CD-Recorder.Of course as Superfly said just using one drive on the scsi bus is just scratching the surface of SCSI potential but it still is a great performance boost(especially combined with a SCSI CDRW).For mor info go to www.scsi.org or www.scsi.com.

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-=Jimmy=-

[superfly]

hey Grail you'll need a new motherboard if you intend to purchase a scsi ultra3 adapter because a standard 32bit pci slot can only sustain 133mb per second and remember that bandwith is shared among all the pci slots so if you have a sound card and also an ethernet card even those 133mb won't be available all the time.you'll need a motherboard that either has ultra3 scsi built in or find a motherboard that has 64bit 66 mhz pci(528mb per second maximum banwith) slots,another thing to remember is that ultra3 scsi pci adapters are likely to cost upwards of 500$ us at first.for the time being (next year or two) ultra2 is more than enough unless you want to set up a server.

[Grail]

Yeah, I realized that a short while after I posted. I will probably upgrade my motherboard to get the Ultra 160. Hmmm... Tyan again? (almost a no brainer for me )
I'll start saving my pennies now for it. Hopefully, by the time Tyan releases another Dual setup with SCSI 3, I'll have the money for it(still need a P3 or higher right now. Just have a o/c'ed Celeron 300A@450).
I think I have gone too far to the Dark Side to come back to IDE .
This all started when I had my brother's Plextor 8x SCSI CD-R in my computer(before he bought a SCSI controller card for his computer). I can't go back now.

P.S. Supafly, I am a power freak. Still learning what I can do to satisfy me and how much it is hurting my wallet. I might be crazy enough to setup a server class system one of these days. Oh yeah, I bought the Thunder 100 shortly after it first came out. Cost me about 600 bucks Canadian :/.

[This message has been edited by Grail (edited 29 December 1999).]

[superfly]

tyan alredy have new boards out that support ultra3 scsi(they're even dual channel!)the main reason i haven't jumped on those myself is that they only support rambus memory(costs about 800$ for 128mb stick-ouch!!!)and the other model they offer does support sdram pc 100 but uses a memory translator chip between memory(sdram)and the north bridge chip(intel 840-aka carmel-)so you'll actually lose performance when compared to a standard bx setup(no extra chip needed between memory and chipset).so the time isn't right for buying motherboards right now since intel is due to introduce a new chipset(815-aka solano2) in the next 2 months that supports agp4x with 133mhz front side bus using pc133 sdram directly(no extra chip needed and much cheaper).intel is mad about the fact that no one is very enthusiastic about using rambus(very expensive and for the time being not even needed)and most oem's than are using the new 133 fsb p3's(coppermine)are assembling their sistems with via's apollo pro chipset and that suits via just fine don't you think(oh the irony of it all ).